BishopAccountability.org
	Strange Happenings in Italy By Sister Maureen Paul Turlish Voice from the Desert September 7, 2008 http://reform-network.net/?p=1979 Once again some very strange things are being reported to us from the international wire services. This time the story comes from Rome. Hopefully, not from the Holy See, but who’s to say? One Antonio Rungi is described as a priest and a theologian who is organizing “an online beauty pageant for nuns to give them more visibility within the Catholic Church and to fight the stereotype that they are all old and dour.” Thank you very much but no thanks. We’re a little too busy doing what we do best, working for the people of God. From street kids, battered women, the homeless, the hungry, the disenfranchised to inner city youths who learned a little too late the importance of staying in school and are now trying to catch up with a GED for starters. From parish grade schools and religious education programs through graduate schools of theology, from health clinics in the U.S. to clinics in the Turkana desert of Kenya and every conceivable spot on the map in between. From soup kitchens in D.C. to Hell’s Kitchen in New York and as doctors and nurses in wars bloodiest battles, past and present, in this country and around the world. How dare anyone think we would appreciate any condescending paternalistic attitude from a schoolteacher cleric located somewhere in Naples. If it is “ecclesiastical life” Rungi is worried about then I would suggest he address his fellow priests there in Italy concerning the church’s clergy abuse scandal that continues moving like wildfire across countries and around the world. As a result “ecclesiastical life” is at a very low ebb these days. Perhaps Rungi could encourage his fellow clerics to get their collective heads out of the sand, or where ever they’ve had them stuck for the last few decades, and start speaking out to their leadership, speaking up for children, young women, men and vulnerable adults who have been sexually abused in Italy and in the rest of the world as well and do what you were supposed to do in the first place, call the police while protecting members of their flock. Or have they been so emasculated by an institution that they have been rendered incapable of speaking the Truth? It really isn’t an American problem as some cardinal insiders stated as the gospel truth awhile back. Nor can it be blamed on the homosexuals who are in the priesthood and among the hierarchy as bishops and cardinals. Child abuse is a pandemic. As well as abusing children, young adults, married women and nuns, sexual predators, especially child abusers, may be married or not, heterosexual or homosexual, male or female, priest, minister, rabbi or imam. I am no psychologist, psychiatrist or analyst but it appears to me that Rungi’s actions tell us much more about how the clerical caste system really views women, especially women religious, then it tells us about the aspirations of one Italian, Antonio Rungi, bent on replacing Bert Parks. We have had women enter our ranks who were notable personalities in their own right, celebrities if you will, including movie stars but they did not join our band to be in yet another beauty contest. We already have our stars and we call them saints. From the four churchwomen murdered in El Salvador on December 2, 1980, Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan to Notre Dame de Namur Sister Dorothy Stang, assassinated on February 12, 2005 fighting for the land rights for poor settlers in Amazon. From anti-war and anti-discrimination, to justice and peace and the closing of the School of the Americas, now euphemistically known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Ah, but this AP story comes from Italy and while there have been some very strange statements coming out from Rome recently this one has to take first prize in the weird category. Bert, would you open the envelope please. Sister Maureen Paul Turlish SNDdeN
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